Flame, Glass and Ink are Poems, essays, and reading notes by Stefania Joori Suh

Tag: blogging

  • At the Harbour, Before I Know the Story

    Reading Day — Thursday, August 13th, 2026

    On Elizabeth Taylor’s A View of the Harbour

    My first time in the harbour: at the dock, standing in the sea breeze. English air. An unfamiliar coast, oddly familiar. But this is not a book about the cozy English sea town in a postcard.

    I have read only the first few pages of the book, and it has already given me its weather and atmosphere. I feel the harbour holding the secrets of the townspeople. I feel the sea carrying the flotsam and jetsam of life quietly and bringing them into the harbour—an always moving inside a never-arrival.

    The characters I have met so far are ordinary in the sense that none of them has that fierce individualism, existential malady, or anything that instantly piques the senses. But people may find pornography in Jane Eyre: the tension, the ache, the desire. They are not spoken but felt. People keep them in the mind, as if giving a voice to the forbidden would desecrate Jane Eyre.

    I think that is what the book wants us to see: what may seem ordinary on the surface, like a calm sea, hides a storm spiraling into a pillar of fury, discordance, and disorientation. I have not yet come to know the characters, except for Prudence, whose two Siamese cats love pushing their small heads against her legs. It is the cats that draw my attention to her, but she seems to have a story to tell as a beautiful young girl who does not act like a beautiful teenage girl.

    Prudence is Prudence: Quaker in name, puritanical in action. But she may turn out to be someone different from what I have seen as I progress through the pages, although I want her to remain as I see her now. I want her to be beautiful without being popular.

    That is life, isn’t it? Change is human, an uninvited grace. You want someone you like to remain the way you know them. That is what I want to know after I complete reading the book.

    The sea will remain the same. The harbour may not.

    — Stephanie Joori Suh

  • Shooting star

    He shouldn’t have been there. No, not at that McDonald’s or any McDonald’s where random people might have seen him. For the class of people he seems to care about, that’s how they perceive him. What an irony it is—sad but true.

    Mangione must have been incredibly hungry to eat at a McDonald’s while knowing he was on the run.

    Did he think he wouldn’t be caught? It seemed almost naive in a boldly youthful way. Mind you, I am not endorsing his killing of the CEO of UnitedHealthcare on his way to the “investment” conference. Still, his motives reflect some of the ancient and medieval ideas of self-evident justice—his actions against the unjust. The entire narrative feels like an adventurous tale about a young knight.

    He comes from a wealthy background, much like our new president-elect, Donald Trump. However, there is a key difference: Mangione is a well-read, articulate thinker and writer who empathizes with the have-nots. He does not feel entitled or complacent about his status and circumstances. Here is a young man who truly cares about those outside the boundaries of social protection—those without health insurance or, even if they have it, without enough benefits.

    He is an unlikely person in an unusual situation.

  • Cat who thinks himself

    Toro thinks

    My cat thinks

    Not that he is a cat.

    But hey! Who knows?

    He is a human who never

    got to see the sun of life

    but returned from the other

    Not drinking from the Lethe

    wearing a cat-skin in tabby 

    to live with his family, poor

    but rich with love and care.

    The cat knows the secrets

    of life and the life beyond, 

    and this universe he lives

    he knows it’s one of many

    he has seen in his cat’s eyes

    he has traveled in paws. 

    No wonder he is so beautiful. 

  • prompt 84

    Bloganuary writing prompt
    What’s your dream job?
    View all responses

    The word “Job” always triggers the image of Job, whose piety to God was tested by Satan, who made him go through the trials of life so that he could curse God for the suffering. The etymology of Job is from Greek Iōb, from Hebrew Iyyōbh, meaning ‘occurrence.’ Or ‘Joining Others’ Business,’ which is hardly anything dreamy.

    My ideal Job is one where I can perform my abilities to the greatest extent possible with good pay and benefits packages to secure my livelihood. After a series of misses on the Wheel of Fortune, I finally landed my current Job as a case manager assistant in a law firm, which I am grateful for (although some of the co-workers behave foolishly and immaturely as if they were teenagers.) It’s not a dream job, and I wouldn’t have to sustain a job if I won a lottery or possessed bequeathed estates from the family trust account. Still, it helps me pay the rents, dues, provide the food and medical to my cats and Mom, and keep my appearance.

    No jobs are dreams; if you insist, they will not last like a midsummer night’s dream because feelings are fleeting and precarious. Earl of Kent wouldn’t have had to get a job if King Lear had not let him go of employment as his trusty servant. And when he got it, it wasn’t his dream job, either.

  • “Drag Me to Hell” (2009 Film) – movie review

    Image credit: Google

    At first, I didn’t like the movie poster, which was too screaming of “HORROR” aimed at the teenage audience. So, I avoided watching it for over a decade since its release in 2009. But for some reason, unbeknownst to me, the movie advertisement kept popping up on Amazon Prime and NetFlix until I clicked on it last week out of curiosity blended with 90% boredom and 10% of my brother’s words to try it. I know I was destined to watch it now that I have watched it.


    The movie’s protagonist is Christine, a relatable character, a young woman from a country to Los Angeles, the City of Angels, who wants to build her own life as a successful career woman so that nobody will look down upon her. She is more naive than innocent, with a good heart, if not golden. Nevertheless, she cares about people’s feelings and does not have the iron will to harbor her vengeance against those who insulted her. But sometimes, it’s those little people who get the biggest shoutout. She meets her Waterloo and literally crosses the Rubicon to face the demon. Still, the question echoes: did she deserve the curse? Why is it always that the ones who are good ninety-nine times get picked on and punished without mercy for a one-time fault? What makes them scapegoats for an offense in the eye of the beholder?


    The movie’s director is heartless and sarcastic about human nature in the face of reality by being merciless to the protagonist as if he were trying to play God, who he appears to think is remote and unsympathetic to the plight of his children. Otherwise, why does he let things happen to her and do nothing to protect her from evil? Christine might be nervously anxious to prove herself worthy of better opportunities as a single woman away from her not-so-pleasant past, but that cannot be the cause of sinister consequences. She could have loved herself the way she was, and all would have been well. Indeed, we should be kind and attentive to those in need. Still, the politicians and the celebrities with money are evasive of punishments for their wrongdoings because they know they can get away with anything, even from the curse. And I do not pity the spiteful Gypsy woman who drags the meek, not the powerful, to hell.

    Christine deserves no place in hell.

  • prompt 58

    Share what you know about the year you were born.

    Photo Credit: Google

    The year I was born was the Year of the Tiger. It says a lot about me. Independent, Loyal, Considerate, Solitary, Inquisitive, and Compassionate. They say a Tiger is a born leader and fit for running a business. Indeed, I am a writer of my own and an independent thinker. But it’s rare to encounter someone with my year and my generation as a whole at work or in public, which I always feel in-between, transitional, liminal, or cruel to be kind, lost even.

    • My mom delivered me by admitting herself into a maternity ward in St Mary’s Hospital in Seoul, Korea, on a snowing wintry evening. Dad was working at the bank, and she didn’t want to interrupt his working time. Mom, being exceptionally devoted to Mother Mary, wanted to deliver her first child at her namesake’s hospital.
    • U.S. President Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency following the Watergate scandal.
    • The first human ancestor Lucy, dated to be 3.2million years old, was discovered in Ethiphia. Lucy is named after a Beatles’s song “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds.” But I still don’t believe she is our huamkind’s ancestor.
    • Hello Kitty came to the world! ❤️ And Forever!

    Consequently, I feel like my generation has become an age of Judge according to Shakesperea’s Seven Stages of Life, whether I’m not too fond of it or not. Denial of the age is asking for trouble against natural law, said Cicero. Of course, there is nothing new under the sun, but the contemporaneous MZ Generation is a different tribe reminiscent of the children’s tribe in William Golding’s Lord of the Flies or Stephen King’s Children of the Corns. Amid the generational waves, I can’t help but think that my generation is those who rescued the stranded children in Lord of the Flies or the couple who tried to save the doomed children of the corns. But no one seems to care about it but to disappear beyond the time. But you know what? We are the survivors of the change from the Metal Age to the Digital Age, and we are yet to be withered and stale.

    From Pinterest